Teachers at my cutting-edge California junior high applied pressure to make students ecological warriors. Students underwent daily propaganda sessions about litter and recycling, conservation and waste - all with an overarching apocalyptic theme.

Food was scarce; air polluted; water contaminated; conditions crowded. Our teachers said that by the year 2000, people would need gas masks to step outdoors.

We'd be lucky to survive into 2000 anyway.

Soon, we'd all be packed shoulder to shoulder.

Years later, I traveled across wide open spaces to South Dakota, dumbfounded. I'd been convinced that the entire nation was as densely packed as downtown Sacramento.

I'd grown up in a reason-drenched, atheist home, my parents contributors to Zero Population Growth and active in progressive circles. I'd believed the scary scenario. How could vast spaces of land still exist when overcrowding and doom had been predicted by real scientists years earlier?

This week, a British eco group rolled out a video to shock people into reducing carbon emissions 10 percent by Oct. 10 - the 10:10 Campaign, and it reminded me of those junior high days.

The clip begins with a nice teacher asking her pupils for ways they would participate in the 10:10 program. While most kids raise hands and give practical suggestions, two kids seem bored. The teacher says no pressure, then pushes a red button. The two bored kids explode at their desks - blood and gore flying everywhere, landing on neighboring students, who scream.

The teacher smiles and repeats No pressure. There is no pressure, no pressure at all to decide how you will participate. But if you balk, you are blown to pieces.

There is no room for dissent, questioning or disagreement with authority. The cause is too important. The kids who are decimated, aren't arguing - they're just not showing enthusiasm. One shrugs, and the other rolls her eyes. That is enough to justify bloody extermination on the spot.

Later in the clip, a young woman helping the 10:10 project by doing voice-overs is also blown up. Why? Because she feels her voice-over is contribution enough, and the authorities think otherwise. Blood, gore again fly as she explodes.

You'd think the video was a right-wing parody of eco-extremists, but it's not.

The creators' callous, smirking attitude is worse than the carnage.

The filmmakers are saving the planet. Their holy mission justifies just about anything.

After public outrage prompted 10:10 to withdraw the clip, project founder Franny Armstrong told the Guardian newspaper that they killed five people to make the clip - a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change. Also, Clearly we don't really think they should be blown up; that's just a joke for the mini-movie, but maybe a little amputating would be a good place to start?

The Guardian calls it edgy. I'll say. As in serrated.

A few months back, James J. Lee took hostages at the Discovery Channel. In his demand letter he wrote, Focus must be given to how people can live without giving birth to more filthy human children.

He asked the channel to talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people's brains.

Lee described the peril of the earth due to increasing numbers of human infants he described as filthy, disgusting and parasitic.

But humans keep procreating, the little devils!

Because the earth-saving cause is so vital, eco-zealots feel extreme measures are needed. It's 10-10 - almost the 11th hour - and pressure is building.

The No Pressure video demonstrates that James J. Lee was not alone in his extreme views.

But I am living proof that government schooled indoctrination wears off pretty quickly. I still remember some of the scare propaganda I was subjected to, and believed at the time. And I also remember eventually outgrowing it.

Home Schooling or a ban on indoctrination of any sort by these half baked, poorly educated ‘teachers’who are forced to follow strict Federal and Union guide lines....if you want your child to think for him or her self, teach them at home.

3
posted on 10/10/2010 11:42:24 AM PDT
by yoe
("N" is for NO for Progressives in government.)

>>>But I am living proof that government schooled indoctrination wears off pretty quickly. I still remember some of the scare propaganda I was subjected to, and believed at the time. And I also remember eventually outgrowing it.<<<

Same here, my friend. I grew up in the most liberal of liberal precincts in Connecticut - I even worked with Ralph Nader to help establish the first Earth Day celebrations.

The problem with scare propaganda is that it doesn’t survive the first dire prediction which doesn’t come true. I remember reading “The Population Bomb” in the early 1970s - great stuff for a teenager, on par with a good comic or an end-of-the-world movie - and when those predicted famines didn’t take place in the 1980s, I remember having a good inner laugh. In fact, those early experiences made conservative thought more attractive.

Ditto for feminism. It didn’t survive beyond the first few girlfriends.

As I’ve written before, I’m now a high school English teacher, and my observation is that the classrooms with the heaviest doses of leftist indoctrination teach students how to be cynical about leftist beliefs.

Interesting point; I too was indoctrinated into the whole ecological doomsday stuff during high school and college, now I think it’s a load. However, how do you explain those who don’t ever disbelieve? The adults our age or older who still believe it?? After still being very much alive and vibrant way after overpopulation and pollution was supposed to kill us? Many of them are making policy for our government!

I agree with your post. A friend of mine teaches Social Studies (and no ALL teachers are NOT liberals out to poison little minds meaning they should ALWAYS be home-schooled.) What she finds is that in the current political climate, most kids have formed political opinions at home and are not as socially naive as they may have been in the 60’s. The lines have usually been drawn long before their high school and college years.

When my 13 year old came home with the over population propaganda in 1993, I showed him the math that the world's population would all fit into the state of Texas with 1500 sf each. We could not all live there comfortably but he got the point, he took the proof to his teacher, a teacher with 5 children and the teacher still had to say,"well we could not all live in 1500sf each!!

Same child came home from a city public school in 1990 asking if I recycled. Yes, I had bought into the hype, "who wants to know" I asked. "My teacher wants me to make sure my parents recycle" he says.

At that very moment, I dumped all the different bags into the same one and told him to tell his teacher his mother does not recycle, what are you going to do about it? Still don't recycle it had a profound impact on me where the schools were sending my children home with earth worship attitudes.

That is their religion. They are not believers in the one true God, the Father of Creation and Jesus Christ our Lord. We should be good stewards of our land, but God created the earth and in His time, he will take it out and all the earth worshippers with it.

8
posted on 10/10/2010 12:21:51 PM PDT
by thirst4truth
(The left elected a mouth that is unattached to an eye, brain or muscle.)

But I am living proof that government schooled indoctrination wears off pretty quickly.

Yes, but there are some that never get over their indoctrination.

I believe it is best to shut down the government indoctrination day camps (public schools) rather than play some sort of ridiculous Russian-roulette game with the future by seeing how many will disbelieve the eco-lies eventually.

9
posted on 10/10/2010 12:32:14 PM PDT
by MichiganConservative
(A government big enough to do unto the people you don't like will get to doing unto you soon enough.)

“Lee described the peril of the earth due to increasing numbers of human infants he described as filthy, disgusting and parasitic.”

These people are delusional liars and total hypocrites. If they actually, totally and sincerely believed what they say about the human population, they’d all do their highest duty to their beliefs and commit suicide.

ANOTHER REASON TO HOMESCHOOL

This ping list is for the other articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. This can occasionally be a fairly high volume list. Articles pinged to the Another Reason to Homeschool List will be given the keyword of ARTH. (If I remember. If I forget, please feel free to add it yourself)

The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.

13
posted on 10/10/2010 1:31:50 PM PDT
by metmom
(Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)

I believe it is best to shut down the government indoctrination day camps (public schools) rather than play some sort of ridiculous Russian-roulette game with the future by seeing how many will disbelieve the eco-lies eventually.

No argument at all with that. And now is the time to do it. We're broke, and technology can deliver the world's best teachers to even the most remote students. And our students will eventually have to compete with everyone in the world, either on brains and innovation, or by having lower wages than others. I think no one want to compete on wages. There is no excuse for crappy education anymore.

I remember this crap being shoved down my throat in school in the 70’s too. Woodsy the owl, Uncle Smiley, my teachers telling us to recycle, making terrariums, over population, the commmercial with the kid saying “parents need to stop being ‘fuelish’”, or there wouldn’t be ANY oil by the time he went to college, the whole lot. I’ve never understood how this crap has been repeated for 40 plus years and NONE of their “predictions” have come true. The biggest $hithole pollution disasters occur in countries without freedom.

17
posted on 10/10/2010 4:51:06 PM PDT
by boop
("Let's just say they'll be satisfied with LESS"... Ming the Merciless)

Ive never understood how this crap has been repeated for 40 plus years and NONE of their predictions have come true.

I have never understood that either. It's like Communism - there has never, ever been a successful, prosperous Communist country...yet there are still people who are committed to Communism heart and soul.

Most of the folks I have reconnected with from high school (through Facebook) seem to be quite liberal. I am the only one who is clearly conservative.... The indoctrination seems to not have worn off with them. Of course, they all seem to be divorced women or gay men....I’m not sure if that says something about my choice of friends in high school or about Facebook.

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